Phil’s Day Off..

Due to my abnormally long sick leave, my assignment is slightly different than others. However, I will still recap the particular views of my philosopher and my group’s contradiction.

Being bedridden for two weeks definitely gives one some time to think, and more than few times I found my mind turning to the discussion my group had in class. We had summarize the thinkings of our philosophers (Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates) and come up with a general statement. “The good in us is reflected by our relationships with others.” Ultimately, I agree. Can one really be a good person if they treat everyone surrounding them horribly? Is a murderer a good person at heart? However, there is so much that comes with this question it becomes increasingly loaded with details. Technically, there is no real definition to good and evil. Our society is what creates our version of it, what may be evil to us could be the norm for another species or planet. For example, hamsters. There are many situations in which they eat their young. If a woman in our society today were to do that, she would likely be sent to prison. However, for the hamster it is simply a way of life for them. Not necessarily evil in any way. Their mother-child relationship is not technically corrupt, as we would view a like relationship in society today. Aristotle relied heavily on the relationships (ex:father-son, husband-wife) and their effects on life in general, but he did not take into consideration the bigger picture. Our philosophers all agreed that how you treat another reflects you, “do unto others how you would have them do unto you” is our golden rule. Essentially, this is true to our society. But what I am trying to explain is that there is no good or evil, simply what we view as such.
This brings me to my next point, the contradiction of our theme. Taking all this into consideration, a slightly foggy realization has come to me. This is exactly what we were discussing in class, our perception of reality. Our views on good/evil is simply our small fragment of the universe and what we consider to be our world. If we were to start questioning good and evil we would be questioning our entire beings, and by accepting the definitions society has provided us we are simply engaging in our slice of perceptive reality. Therefore, by that logic the contradiction is obvious, yet would require much more in depth conversation and a potential blog post of it’s own. The good in us cannot be shown by our treatment of others, due to the fact that good does not exist.

I do apologize for how this post rambles, it was hard to collect all my thoughts for this and attempt to summarize. It was hard to find a direct point for this blog as I had missed so much class and so I could not exactly answer the necessary questions to the best extent. Obviously, I found that this is what my mind kept returning to, and found it imperative that I share my thoughts. Thank you for reading!